FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCE - PAGE 2

A small bomb exploded Saturday beneath the driver's seat of a car near Belfast, killing the Protestant driver and engulfing the vehicle in flames. The bomb went off as Glen Greer, 28, drove away from his home in Bangor, 15 miles east of Belfast, making him the first person to die in a political killing in Northern Ireland in three months. Greer, who crawled from the burning vehicle but died in a hospital, might have been targeted in a feud involving one or more of Northern Ireland's four pro-British Protestant paramilitary groups.

Every Wednesday night, Roisin Loughlin, a resident of the North Belfast Catholic enclave of New Lodge, prepares herself and her two young children for the big event of their week: a visit with her husband. "Then on Thursday," she said, "it's all systems go, getting everybody ready. But then when you get home, you are very depressed and lonely. And you just get back into your routine." Mrs. Loughlin's 30-year-old husband, Gerald, is in the Maze Prison outside Belfast serving a life sentence for murder.

Masked Protestant guerrillas fired shots in the air as pro-British loyalists lit huge fires across Northern Ireland in the early hours Friday to usher in the "Twelfth of July." At two events marking the anniversary along the militantly Protestant Shankill Road area, gunmen stepped out of the shadows at midnight to fire volleys in front of cheering crowds. The shows of strength by the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Force came as vast bonfires were set across the province.

The sweet sounds you hear coming from Northern Ireland nowadays are those of guns falling silent, grenades being stowed, bombs getting shelved. This time the one laying down their weapons are the main unionist paramilitaries, whose umbrella organization said Thursday that, like the Irish Republican Army, they would "universally cease all operational hostilities." The ensuing expressions of delight-"this is a wonderful moment, a tremendous and exciting opportunity," said Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds-testify to the exhilarating impact of an idea whose time has arrived: Abandon violence and negotiate an end to the long and bloody dispute over the future status of Northern Ireland, or Ulster.

Northern Ireland's largest loyalist paramilitary force announced Sunday that it will put its weapons aside, another step toward ending the continuing low-level violence that has plagued the region despite the election of a power-sharing government earlier this year. In a statement timed to coincide with a holiday commemorating war victims across Britain, the Ulster Defense Association said its military wing would stand down and put its weapons out of reach. The Ulster Volunteer Force made a similar move in May. Neither loyalist group went as far as the Irish Republican Army, which handed in its weapons and authorized its political wing to join erstwhile Protestant adversaries in the new government.

(Updates number injured, adds police quotes, details) BELFAST, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Forty-seven police were injured while trying to separate Catholic and Protestant rioters in Belfast on Sunday, when violence broke out during a march by a Catholic band, Northern Ireland police said on Monday. Police fired water cannon to defend themselves from petrol bombs, fireworks, stones and bottles thrown at them by both sides in running battles lasting nearly 12 hours, police said.

The Irish Republican Army has sent three teams of gunmen to Britain to target top politicians before the May 1 election, according to the Sunday Times newspaper. Citing security sources, the paper said intelligence officers have warned senior Conservative Party members of Parliament, former Northern Ireland ministers and associates of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Early Monday, London police closed parts of Heathrow airport and five railway stations during morning rush hour after receiving what they termed "threatening phone calls."

Britain and leading Northern Ireland Protestants moved to give impetus to the province's peace process Wednesday in response to the Irish Republican Army's historic partial disarmament, but rumblings of dissent from various quarters made it appear an end to violence was still a long way off. British Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid announced in Parliament on Wednesday that Britain began to demolish two security installations in the IRA heartland...

In another blow to Northern Ireland's eroding peace process, the British government made it official Friday that three Protestant paramilitary forces have ended a seven-year cease-fire. The statement followed months of attacks on Roman Catholics and police in the provincial capital, Belfast, by the Ulster Defense Association, or UDA, the largest of the pro-British paramilitary groups, and a splinter group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters. "They have systematically breached their cease-fire, and the patience of the people of Northern Ireland has run out," said Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid.

After four nights of gunfire and Molotov cocktails, the latest outbreak of Protestant violence in Belfast's streets appears to be waning, but the British government Wednesday formally declared the Ulster Volunteer Force, the paramilitary group behind the violence, to be in violation of its 1994 cease-fire agreement. "What I've done in this decision overnight is to send an absolutely crystal clear signal to everybody that we will not tolerate violence," said Peter Hain, the government's Northern Ireland secretary.